2nd Sonoma County Resident Presumptive Positive For Coronavirus

SANTA ROSA, CA – A second Sonoma County resident who traveled on the Grand Princess cruise ship from San Francisco to Mexico and back has tested presumptive positive for the novel coronavirus, the Sonoma County Department of Health Services confirmed Thursday morning.

Both patients are in isolation rooms at a local hospital, officials said.

California's first coronavirus-related death involved a passenger from Placer County, an individual with underlying health conditions, from the same cruise, officials said.

A presumptive positive case is defined as likely to be positive for COVID-19. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct another test to confirm the diagnosis. Tests conducted by the California Department of Public Health in close coordination with the CDC and county and hospital officials led to the presumptive positive diagnosis.

The ship, with thousand of passengers on board, remains off the coast of California with testing planned for some passengers, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday during a state of emergency proclamation.

The Grand Princess was on its way back from Hawaii, Newsom said. It left San Francisco bound for Hawaii after traveling to and from Mexico. The death of the Placer County person, who disembarked the ship after returning from Mexico, and that the ship was headed to the state were the reasons for the emergency declaration, Newsom said.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed said on Twitter that city officials have been told by the CDC and the U.S. Coast Guard "that a cruise ship originally scheduled to return to San Francisco contains individuals who have exhibited flu-like symptoms."

Officials with city departments including the mayor's office, the department of emergency management, department of public health and the Port of San Francisco will be assisting, as needed, the mayor's office said.

The cruise ship off the coast returned to San Francisco from Mexico on Feb. 21, Newsom said. Then it left for Hawaii. A request was made to delay the ship's pending arrival in San Francisco and it may be in port Thursday.

Newsom said test kits would be flown to the ship and the results would be sent to a lab in Richmond to see if anyone with symptoms has the virus. California now has 14 labs for testing people for the virus and Newsom said he expects that number to rise to 20. The state had more than 5,000 test kits as of Wednesday.

Sonoma County officials, meanwhile, have a list of Sonoma County residents who were on the Grand Princess cruise Feb. 11-21, and the shuttles to and from the ship, and are contacting those passengers to make them aware.

The 14-day window of risk from those exposures ends Friday evening, March 6, county officials said.

If passengers have not exhibited symptoms by then, they will be considered not at risk from the cruise-ship exposure, the county said.

RELATED:

• Coronavirus: Grand Princess Cutting Voyage Short, Returning To SF
• First CA Coronavirus Death Reported In Northern California
• Coronavirus: First 'Presumptive Positive' Sonoma County Resident

Patch will update this developing story.

Bay City News contributed to this post.